1) Excerpt from Editorial: Time to Graduate from the Electoral College
Louis Vincent
should work, and it has worked-most of the time. A few times, however, the system has failed. In these cases, the candidate with
fewer popular votes gained enough electoral votes to win the election. This occurred during the 2000 presidential election when
more people voted for Al Gore, but George W. Bush earned more electoral votes and became the president. What causes such a
breakdown in the system to happen? Let's return to the example of California and Alaska. A single vote in California has the
power to override thousands of votes in other states. Imagine that only one person in California casts a vote for Candidate A.
That candidate wins the popular vote in California 1-0. He or she gets all of California's 55 electoral votes. Across the country,
thousands of voters in Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Jersey, and Delaware
cast their votes for Candidate B. Not one voter casts a vote for Candidate A. These states have a combined 52 electoral votes,
which is not enough to beat California's 55. How can the leaders of our country believe that this system is fair?
Which of these statements makes the BEST counter-argument to the California scenario presented in Section 4?
A)
B)
It would never happen that only one person would vote in an election in
California
Smaller states should have less power to choose the President than larger
states have
Each state is free to allot electors proportionally to the popular vote, not
all-or-nothing
The Founding Fathers' wisdom in creating the Electoral College should be
respected, regardless of changes in conditions.
D)